Heretofore, various catalysts have been known for the hydration of olefins, and attempts have been made to use solid catalysts because of their ease of separation and recovery from the reaction product. Usually the hydration of an olefin is favored when the temperature is low and the presence is high. However, such a reaction condition is not practical because the known solid catalysts such as silica, alumina, silica-alumina, mordenite, and zeolite become deactivated by liquid water which is formed in the reaction system.
On the other hand, a hydration process is known which employs a cation exchange resin such as sulfonated styrene-divinylbenzene copolymer as a catalyst. This catalyst exhibits a comparatively high activity for hydration under the condition where there is liquid water. However, it has a drawback. Namely, it irreversibly liberates sulfonic acid groups and becomes greatly deactivated when the reaction temperature is increased, say above 120.degree. C., so as to obtain the industrially desirable reaction rate. The liberated sulfonic acid groups corrode the apparatus. The deactivated catalyst cannot be regenerated by calcination which is commonly employed for inorganic solid catalysts.
Under these circumstances, there has recently been proposed a process for hydrating an olefin by using a specific crystalline aluminosilicate. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,214,107, and Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 70828/1982.) The proposed process, however, is not practical because the catalyst does not have a sufficiently high catalytic activity.
Other patents of interest are U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,270,011 and 4,284,831 and British Pat. No. 1,518,461.
It is an object of this invention to provide a process for hydrating an olefin with a highly active solid catalyst. Applicants have found that this object can be achieved by using as a catalyst hydrogen-type mordenite or hydrogen-type zeolite Y having a specific silica/alumina ratio.